Welcome to Far Cry 5, a lily-livered attempt at satire.

Joseph Seed and his Christian extremist cult dubbed “Eden’s Gate” have chosen Hope County to be their headquarters as they prepare for doomsday. They’ve used violent tactics to take over and have essentially waged war against the government. Assuming the role of a local deputy, players are tasked with helping freedom fighters take the county back.

The premise of Far Cry 5 is a promising one that references real events, including David Koresh (Joseph Seed even looks like him) and his Branch Davidians in Waco, the Ruby Ridge standoff, the Rajneeshie cult that took over Oregon’s Wasco County, and the name “Eden’s Gate” is a clear reference to the Heaven’s Gate death cult. Combine all that with the Montana Red State setting and the current socio-political climate, and this should be a perfect recipe for an ambitious game that takes on hard issues, like Ubisoft’s early marketing suggested, and pushes the Far Cry series forward.

Naturally, all this potential is wasted.

Joseph Seed and his siblings John, Jacob and Faith are the game’s Big Bads and each control a separate region of Hope County. They all specialize in one area of the cults needs, like Jacob playing recruiter in the Whitetail Mountains and John acting as Eden’s Gate’s lawyer at his headquarters in Holland Valley. Other than these basic details, not much more is explored with these villains. There are cutscenes and radio calls that show them being devious and charismatic, but they all come off as milquetoast bad guys that don’t offer much in the way of meaningful drama.

There are current topics that are brought up, like gun ownership, authoritarianism and subtle references to Trump, but that’s it. None of these things are addressed or form part of the narrative. The villains are supposed to be taken seriously, which is clear from their demeanor and voice acting, but everything else about the writing is half-baked satire that’s devoid of substance and would rather be silly, which it also fails at achieving.

The citizens of Hope County, Montana are all paranoid preppers and survivalists, beer guzzlin’ rednecks and/or loony conspiracy theorists that all have southern accents despite living in a state that borders Canada. There’s even some weirdo that needs help building a teleporter and gives out an alien ray gun as a reward. Oh and there’s a priest.

Essentially, Far Cry 5’s narrative comes off like a rejected Grand Theft Auto script. It tries to put America under the microscope like Rockstar is aces at doing, but it pulls every punch and ultimately says nothing.

Credit should be given to the developers altering the series design a bit by removing the trademark tower climbing that’s found in numerous Ubisoft games, making all the outposts look and feel different from one another and sidequests being found in a more natural manner by stumbling upon quest-givers as the map is explored, but make no mistake this is still the tried and true Far Cry formula. These welcome changes are nice at the beginning, but soon reality kicks in and it’s like playing Far Cry 3 and 4 again.

Of course the gameplay is “fun”, but there’s really nothing new going on here. The weapons and vehicles behave like they typically do, extras like hunting, fishing (new to the series) and crafting are still around, hidden stashes are peppered throughout the land and the world is as open as it ever was. Also, like many Ubisoft titles, Far Cry 5 is glitchy as all get out.

The freedom fighters that can be hired to aid in combat feature some of the game’s most obnoxious bugs. They constantly shout about non-existent enemies in the area and love being a nuisance in combat by either blocking a path, failing to shoot, shooting without being told, or by simply not doing anything at all. That said, they’re great at distracting enemies, who are also idiots.

Many of the missions involve saving resistance members. A few of those require stealth otherwise the cultists will kill the hostages. In one of these misadventures they torched the encampment despite not being alerted yet the mission was a success despite the hostages untimely demise. In a similar instance, the guards went ballistic immediately upon sneaking up to an outpost. They pulled the alarm and brought in reinforcements and all hell broke out. Bugs and glitches like these run rampant throughout the game, something that’s inexcusable for a game that’s made by 2000 people for millions of dollars.

Far Cry 5 is stupid.